Fall 2023 Online Elsewhere Report

Fall 2023 Online Elsewhere Report

Has California community college journalism returned to normal from the pandemic? Not quite. Instead, a new normal is setting in.

· In-person classes are back, but

· Online courses are a permanent part of the new landscape.
· Many publications have abandoned or severely cut back on print.
· Online publications, which clearly draw more eyeballs that their print cousins (admittedly to a different demographic), are a major part of all but two programs across the state, though
· Hanging on to a dream of print hinders program growth at many schools, and
· While many programs are embracing online publication good practices, others still suffer from print mindsets, especially with posting patterns and story presentation.
· Funding for expensive print publications —including glossy magazines— is drying up as advertising goes elsewhere (granted, a devasting trend that started before the pandemic) and college budgets are still reeling from conditions caused by the pandemic shutdowns.
· Some programs are doing well enough with enrollments, but many others are just barely hanging on and may face program eliminations as the economy struggles to recover.

The good news is that across the state community college enrollments are rebounding, but other threats, such as the reclassification of mass comm courses outside of CSU/UC general education packages, could impact program viability.

This is the sixth semester report on California community college student publications and the seventh semester catalogued by Online Elsewhere. The chart above shows the number of posts from each of the last six semesters with fall and spring compared separately and represents the least performing semester in the study.

Semester reports from previous semesters can be found at:

• Spring 2020 - bit.ly/3ZpEgAD

• Spring 2021 - (no report available)

• Fall 2021 - (no report available)

• Spring 2022 - bit.ly/3W3utgP

• Fall 2022 - bit.ly/fall22x

• Spring 2023 - bit.ly/44SgJdx

• Fall 2023 - Print version

The first semester of the study turned out to be the pandemic semester where the paradigm shifted mid-semester. The following fall semester (2020) was not measured.

The following spring (2021), when publications were all operating remotely and most campuses were closed, the number of posts sky-rocketed; there were more first-person and community-based stories that semester. Fall 2021 data was collected after the fact so as to provide a basis for future fall semesters as the Online Elsewhere project expanded to the full school year. Fall 2021 proved to be the least productive semester in the study.

By the 2022-23 school year a new normal in production was settling in. The 2023-24 school year appears to be showing steady gains, albeit nowhere near the high of Spring 2021.

For the just-completed semester, which was measured from Aug. 1 to Dec. 31, 51 publications published 3,956 stories, which represents an 8 percent increase from Fall 2022.

Two colleges with print publications –Los Angeles City and Southwestern—continue to be the only publications without an online presence, a requirement for inclusion in this study. College of the Sequoias, which was side-lined by the college administration for Spring 2023, returned for the fall semester. On the other hand, San Jose City lost its instructor and did not publish at all for Fall 2023. Replacing it in the study was Butte. Cabrillo posted just one story near the beginning of the semester and then went silent.

As in the past, online publications were monitored daily through RSS feeds generated by the publications’ websites. Stories were categorized by genre as news, opinion, sports, and feature and by location as campus focused, community focused, or neither/general. Also noted were actual days posts were published, including time of day. Additional data about some stories was also noted to help distinguish topic patterns. An additional tool, similarweb.com, was used to measure visitor traffic for most publications.

FALL 2023 SUMMARY

Fifty-one publications had posts for the fall semester, ranging from El Camino’s high of 245 stories to Cabrillo’s one story. The average for all publications was 76.5 stories. The semester total was 3,956 stories.

There were 22 possible weeks (Monday through Sunday) in the semester and the average publication had a publication window of 15 weeks. Adjusted weeks for each publication were measured from the first week of the semester it had two or more posts to the last week the last week of the semester with two or more posts. Any one-off posts made by a publication outside that window were included in totals, however.

Weekly averages ranged from East LA’s 13.5 per week over 14 weeks to Foothill’s 1.0 per week over 20 weeks. (Cabrillo did not qualify for a weekly average.) The average for all publications was 4.3 stories, down from Fall 2022’s 5.0 per week.

More than two-thirds (68.8 percent) of all stories were campus-focused, down slightly from 69.7 percent last fall. Nearly one in five stories was not related to the campus or the community surrounding the campus. This, too, was down slightly from Fall 2022’s 69.7 percent. That means the 12.4 percent focused on community was slightly higher than previous semesters.

Fewer than half of all stories (46.7 percent) were classified as news, which was higher than last fall’s 41.6 percent. Nearly one in five stories (19.5 percent) was a sports story and another one in five (19.1 percent) were feature stories. The remaining 13.4 percent were opinion stories.

Wednesday is the most popular day to publish stories with 27.1 percent of all stories being published on that day of the week. The next most popular days were Thursday (18.2 percent) and Monday (17.0 percent). Unsurprisingly, except for sports stories, weekends were the least likely day for posts.

Most posts are made in the afternoon (noon to 5:59 p.m.) with more than half (50.4 percent) being posted during those hours and in the evening (6 p.m. to 11:59 p.m.) with 19.5 percent being posted during those hours. There were 164 stories (just 4.1 percent) posted during the wee hours of midnight to 5:59 a.m. with Cerritos posting nearly a third (n. 51, (31.1 percent) of those and El Camino posting 28 (17.1 percent).

Fourteen publications had a total of 71 late-post stories, stories that were actually published three or more days after their creation dates.

The average publication posted 31 days, or 32.5 percent of possible days (adjusted weeks x 7), which is slightly more than two out of every seven days. But posting averages ranged from Fullerton’s 70.6 percent (just short of five days a week) to Chabot’s 9.5 percent (less than once a week). See Appendix C for an overall chart of posting patterns.

Virtually every publication had at least one excessive gap of six or more days between posts, many were surrounding the Thanksgiving holiday break. The average was 3.2 gaps per publication among those that had any gaps. Two publications had eight gaps and another two had seven. The average gap was 8.4 days, while one publication had a gap average of 22.4 days with its largest being 85 days, and another publication averaged 21.3 days with its largest being 41 days.

Half the colleges (n.26) had at least one excessive-post day, defined as a day with six or more posts. The average excessive post was 8.2 posts. Three publications with clear print-centric posting schedules, had 10 or more excessive post days.

Also measured in the study were unique visitors to websites as reported by the online tool similarweb.com. While these numbers are not as informative as analytic data available to individual sites, the public information available with this tool at least provides a baseline for evaluating the effectiveness of student publications. Also, some sites in the state cannot be measured for different reasons. The sites unmeasurable include Glendale and Palomar. Data displayed on the site is delayed, so at the time of the writing of this report December figures were unavailable. But for August through November there were 5.0 million visits to 50 measurable sites, or an average of 25.1k visitors each month per site. See Appendix C for a chart of traffic averages for each publication.

TERMS AND DEFINITIONS

Stories were categorized by type —news, opinion, sports, or feature—and by localization —campus, community, or neither. In addition, dates and times of posts were noted. Where appropriate, posts were also tagged for subject matter. Monthly reports were shared with publication advisers through the JACC mail listserve.

Posts

Any post was considered for inclusion unless it was an obvious duplicate post, was an obvious test post, or in the case of one college a verified fraud. No other distinction was made. A post might include a story, photographs, and multimedia; or it may include just a brief or a photo. One school even posted individual images/PDFs of print edition pages for portfolio reasons. If a post was later updated, it was treated as a duplicate post.

Dates

When posts are made, RSS feeds usually date-stamp the posts, even if it occasionally takes a couple of days for it to appear in feeds. If posts were later updated some systems add a second date or time stamp; again, these were treated as duplicates. Some schools routinely posted stories that clearly had been created, or at least started, weeks earlier and retained the creation date on posts; but since posts were monitored daily they were recorded as actually being posted on the dates they showed up in the RSS feed.

Late Posts

In most WordPress platforms a story contains a dateline that indicates when it was created, regardless of when it was posted. (Likewise, when stories are updated there often is an updated date added to the meta data.) Most stories are posted within a day of creation. But others don’t show up for days (or weeks), indicating that the publication held on to the story for some time. Posts were recorded for the day they showed up in RSS feeds, but it those dates were three or more days after the creation date they were tagged as late posts. An occasional late post is normal, but some publications make a practice of it.

Times

Along with date stamps are time stamps. Times were recorded and categorized in one of four six-hour blocks of time:

· Wee hours (midnight to 5:59 a.m.),

· Morning (6:00 a.m. to 11:59 a.m.),

· Afternoon (noon to 5:59 p.m.), and

· Evening (6:00 p.m. to 11:59 p.m.)

Two publications (Chaffey and Orange Coast) that do not support standard RSS and did not include time stamps; while dates for posts could be determined, time-of-day could not. These posts were not included in reporting posting times but were included in other counts.

Story Type/Genre

All stories were categorized as one of four types: News, Opinion, Sports, or Feature.

Sports was the first bias in determining story type. Next was News, then Opinion v. Feature. All sports stories were categorized as Sports, regardless of story format.

Many reporters consider only profiles as features, but not for this study. For instance, a story about a club activity would be considered a news story, but if the story primarily focused on the purpose of the club it was considered a news feature.

The most subjective decisions were with reviews: Was the overall tone more opinion or merely feature? Lists of favorite movies/music/foods/holiday traditions, while obviously opinions, were counted as features; and as the only sources for those features were the authors, they were counted as “neither” localization.

Localization

And finally, stories were categorized by one of three localizations: Campus based, community based, or neither/general. Campus based was the first bias. If the story happened on campus or at another district campus, it was campus based. Even national stories that contained local sources or details were determined to be campus based. Merely mentioning the school, most often in leads, was not enough to be categorized as campus based. Some statewide stories that clearly affected a local campus, for instance California Community College Chancellor news conferences for student reporters, were also considered campus based.

Community-based was the second bias. Often this was subjective. Communities in immediate proximity of campus were included, but at times a story in a regional metropolis a few miles down the road might be considered community based, depending on relevance to the campus community; other times they were categorized as neither. The question was in determining how far "community" extended.

"Neither" or “general” was the catch-all for remaining stories. Non-campus reviews most commonly were considered as "neither."

Stories about professional, semi-professional and NCAA-level sports also were categorized as “neither,” even if the team was located in the college’s service area, unless it was primarily a community issue story, such as the Oakland A’s considering a move to Las Vegas, or involved the college, such as a college night at the Anaheim Angels. “Community” sports tended to be stories about local high school sports.

Tags

Subject tags were added to some stories to better highlight story content. They were not included on all stories or topics.

There were no pre-determined tags, though some became obvious, such as identifying different sports or which media were reviewed or to identify topical trends. Other tags were created to help identify important story content for well-rounded publications; for example, "campus governance" for stories about various senates, boards, foundations, unions, and administrations (except for when administrators were used simply as sources).

Adjusted Weeks/Averages

While most colleges started their fall semesters in late August not all do, and different programs start actual publication at different times. Some publications posted stories before the school year started while others took several weeks to get started. Likewise, some publications continue after finals have been completed while others wrap up in late December. And some schools continue to publish during holiday breaks, others do not. There are a total of 22 possible publishing weeks between Aug. 1 and Dec. 31 (fall semester) and 24 weeks between Jan. 1 and June 15 (spring semester).

To create a standard method for determining weekly averages an “adjusted week” metric was used. The first week for any publication was measured as the first in which two or more posts were made between Monday and Sunday. Likewise, the last week of the semester for a publication was the one which contained two or more posts. No adjustments were made for holiday periods. If a publication had additional one-off posts outside its adjusted week window the posts were counted toward the total, but the weeks were not adjusted further.

Campus Governance

One of the roles of any publication is to serve as a watchdog for its community, so note was taken of campus governance stories, such as those that cover student, faculty, and classified senates and unions, board of trustees, college foundations, and some administrative actions.

Multimedia

Four types of multimedia stories were tracked: Stories with or consisting of audio, stories with or consisting of video, stories with or consisting of photo galleries in a widget, and stories with or consisting of interactive tools. Not included were a shrinking number of animated issuu.com or yumpa.com postings. Once common platforms for storing PDF documents, such as copies of print issues, many student publications have moved away after new pricing policies made them difficult to afford. Also tracked were stories with three or more photos that could have, or perhaps should have, been presented in gallery form.

Only two publications (San Diego City and Cerritos) attempted to include ADA transcripts with audio and video stories, though software advances have made creating transcripts relatively easy.

Posting Patterns

Separate posting calendars were kept for each publication to show how many posts were made on which days. The reports that followed highlighted excessive gaps —arbitrarily defined as six or more days— and excessive post days —arbitrarily defined as six or more posts on a single day.

A posting percentage was calculated for each publication by multiplying the number of adjusted weeks by seven days and then dividing the actual number of posting days by the result.

posting days /adjusted weeks x 7 days = posting percentage

Here is how daily averages work out:

· One day = 14.3 percent

· Two days = 28.6 percent

· Three days = 42.9 percent

· Four days = 57.1 percent

· Five days = 7.14 percent

· Six days = 85.7 percent

· Seven days = 100 percent

Sources

A new section on use of sources was included in the Fall 2023 version of the report. After the selection of random samples, stories were measured for use of primary and secondary sources. Clearly defined sources were counted the first time they were used in a story, whether with direct quotations or indirect quotations. No attempt was made to distinguish between quotations from presentations vs. interviews. Stories consisting of PDFs or graphics, such as posters, were counted as single document sources; these consisted mostly of PDFs of entire print issues or single pages of print issues.

Traffic

Traffic, as measured by the free version of SimilarWeb.com, included visitors to the website during the measured monthly window. This did not measure unique visitors. While some data on number of pages visited or time spent on websites was available, those numbers were not included in this study. Results were reported in thousands rather than individual numbers. Results were available for most publications, but not all and reports were delayed by two months.

Disclaimer

No determination on quality of stories or publications was made, as this was not a goal of the study. Raw numbers included in this report are included for illustrative purposes. Publications should look at the numbers and determine whether they meet staff-determined goals.

Most numbers are expressed in terms of percentage of the whole, though raw numbers are included to indicate how percentages were determined. When raw numbers or ranked are highlighted in this study they are not meant to imply "better" or "worse," but are used solely for comparison’s sake.

It should be noted, too, that when percentage-of-the-whole numbers are used a high rank in one category, by definition, it means a corresponding lower rank in another similar category: again, staffs need to establish their own goals.

FALL 2023 LEADERS

Users of this project’s results have indicated that percentages of a publication’s posts are preferred to raw numbers when determining who is doing what. There are still some elements of the study that are best presented as raw numbers. When presented as raw numbers the intent is to help understand the scope of the numbers rather than crown winners.

Posts

The average number of posts for publications across the state for the semester was 76.5 stories. If publication numbers were plotted from most to least, half of them would be above or at average and half would be at or below average. There are a variety of factors, some controllable and others perhaps not, that could dictate where a publication falls on the list. One publication, for instance, that was a high leader in the number of posts in the spring lost its regular instructor, and much of its veteran staff, this year and the publication’s total this fall dropped closer to average, still a good semester performance. That said, the leading publications, by raw numbers, were El Camino with 245 stories (nearly three times the average) and Pasadena with 205 stories. Twelve other publications had totals of 100 or more, but only those two had 200 or more. Just 16 publications (fewer than one-third) were “above average.”

Weekly averages are affected not only by how many total posts a publication had, but also by how many (adjusted) weeks a publication published. East LA led all publications with 13.5 stories per week over 13 weeks. Others averaging 10 or more posts per week included El Camino (12.9), Pasadena (12.8), Long Beach (10.3), and Los Medanos (10.1). The state average is just 4.3 stories per week; 27 publications met or exceeded that standard.

Possibly more important than total numbers of posts or weekly averages is consistency in posting regularly. Posting percentages were determined by dividing the number of actual posts by the number of possible posting days (adjusted weeks x 7 days). The statewide average was 33.2 percent, or just more than twice a week, every week. Some programs with a high concentration on the print product post infrequently, but have a high total or high weekly average, score low on the posting frequency measure. (A frequent posting pattern indicates a highly up-to-date website and can help build long-term audiences; unlike with print editions that can be visibly spotted and picked up on campus, online audiences must learn to seek out the publication.) Fullerton led all publications with posting percentages with 70.6 percent, or about five days a week. Other leaders above 50 percent include El Camino (66.2 percent), Mt. San Antonio (62.9 percent), San Diego City 57.0 percent), Santa Barbara (56 percent), Long Beach(53.3 percent), and Cerritos (52.4 percent) and DeAnza (50.6 percent).

Most publications focus more on campus stories than community or other non-campus stories. (Again, a non-campus topic with a campus localization was counted as a campus story.) An example of when a percentage tells an inadequate story can be found in looking at percentages of campus stories. Cabrillo, with its one story for the semester, led in percentage (100 percent) in campus-focused stories. Sequoias (n.24) also focused on campus stories 100 percent of the time. Campus-focused stories accounted for 68.8 percent of all stories. Other leaders included Laney (n. 33, 97 percent), Saddleback (n. 30, 96.7 percent), Citrus (n. 73, 95.9 percent), San Diego City (n. 102, 95.1 percent), Glendale (n. 20, 95.0 percent), Orange Coast (n. 42, 92.9 percent), El Camino (n. 245, 92.6 percent), and Cosumnes River (n.74, 90.5 percent).

About one in six stories (18.9 percent) had neither a campus focus or a community focus. Many of these included music, movie, and television reviews and features. Butte (n.88) relied heavily on non-campus/non-community stories with 80.7 percent covering stories from around the world. Also reliant on non-campus stories were Chaffey (n.63, 75.6 percent), Skyline (n.28, 60.7 percent), and Santa Rosa (n.77, 42.9 percent).

Community-based stories climbed to a high of 19.9 percent during Fall 2021 when campuses were closed and then slipped to a low of 9.6 percent the following fall. This fall they accounted for 12.4 percent. Leaders included Canyons(n.62, 69.4 percent), Cuesta (n.21, 42.9 percent), Desert (n.35, 22.9 percent), Santa Ana (n.74, 18.9 percent), Fresno(n.62, 17.7 percent), and Contra Costa (n.31, 16.1 percent).

News was the leading genre with just under half of all stories, regardless of localization, of 46.7 percent, followed by sports with 19.5 percent, features with 19.1 percent, and opinion with 14.7 percent. Every campus had at least one campus news story, the only category than can claim full participation.

Traffic

Traffic to websites each month is measured by thousands of unique visitors by a free online tool at similarweb.com. Developing a regular online audience is a multi-year process, but the WordPress platforms used by most publications makes developing online audiences easier. Butte, for instance, joined this study in October after switching from a PDF-style platform and more than doubled its previous audience from about 4.5k visitors per month to 11.k in November. Cerritos led the publications with a four-month average of 58.6k visitors each month, followed by American River (51.0k), San Diego Mesa (49.9k), Los Medanos (49.4k), El Camino (47.9k), Santa Barbara(47.3k), and Santa Rosa (45.2k). Seven publications drew fewer than 10k each per month.

Campus Sports

More than four of five sports stories (83.4 percent) were campus sports stories, which accounted for 16.3 percent of all stories. Professional sports accounted for just 2.9 percent of all stories while community-based sports stories were practically non-existent (n.13, 0.3 percent). Here again, percentages of the whole are helpful, but do not tell the full story. A well-balanced publication is not going to have a high percentage of sports stories, even though it may have a lot of stories.

Percentage leaders in campus sports coverage included Foothill (42.1 percent), Sequoias (41.7 percent), and Santa Monica (41.4 percent). Raw number leaders included Santa Monica (n. 60), East LA (n. 45), El Camino (n. 44), and Long Beach (n.36).

Unsurprisingly, football was the most covered campus sport with 164 stories. Women’s (n.122) and men’s (n.106) soccer were the next most covered campus sports. A total of 20 sports were covered in sports stories where the sport was relevant. Men (53.1 percent) received slightly more coverage than women (46.9 percent) in stories where gender was identifiable and relevant. (Attention all Title IX-concerned publications!)

Counting sports stories by sport is complex as some publications still combine men’s and women’s sports, such as soccer or basketball, into one story. Worse, some publications continue to combine multiple sports into roundups. Such combinations make sense with a print publication because of design issues, short stories can add up to too many small text blocks for clean, easy design, but make less sense online; if readers wanted to follow the women’s water polo team would they look under women’s water polo, water polo, or roundup? (Answer: Probably all three, not a favorable answer.) The length of a standalone online story does not impact design online. Regardless, all sports stories where sport or gender was relevant were parsed to properly count here, even if one roundup story covered multiple sports teams.

Campus Governance

Another major role of student publications is/should be to cover campus governance: trustees, senates, administration, unions, and other shared governance groups. Fourteen publications (about a third) had no campus governance stories and most of the others had just one or two. El Camino was the leader with 25 stories, followed closely by Santa Barbara with 24 stories. Three other publications had 10 or more.

Boards of trustees were the most covered with 63 stories. Administration (n.60) was the most covered campus governance topic. Simply quoting an administrator was not enough, the story had to be about administration, such as the hiring (or firing) of an administrator, or the announcement of an administrative policy. Likewise, student government being listed as a sponsor of a campus event did not automatically qualify a story as a campus governance; government meetings and features about government leaders were. Faculty senates (n.24) were popular to cover on some campuses. And union actions (n.11) were next. Other shared governance groups (n.9), such as college foundations, rounded out the total.

Campus Opinion

One of the roles of a student publication is/should be as an opinion leader, but campus opinion stories are among the smallest numbers of stories in the study. They accounted for just 3.4 percent of all stories. Campus opinion stories included non-sports editorials, columns, and editorial cartoons with a campus tie-in, including play and campus concert reviews. They also included all roving reporter-style stories that asked questions of a campus-based audience, regardless of topic.

With such small numbers, percentages by publication are meaningless; raw numbers tell a clearer story. Sixteen publications, about one third (31.3 percent) had no campus opinion stories of any kind. Another 13 had just one. Pierce (n.25) was the publication with the most campus opinion stories. Long Beach had 11 and Los Medanos had 10. Three publications had nine. (Note: Sports opinion pieces, and there were not many, were all classified as sports.)

That is not to say that publications are devoid of opinion, they just don’t cover campus issues. Opinion stories, after all, accounted for about one in seven (14.7 percent) of all stories. Most were about non-campus issues, including national and cultural issues, and music/movie/television reviews. Seven publications had no opinion stories of any kind while three publications —Skyline (39.3 percent), American River (35.0 percent), and Los Medanos (34.9 percent)— saw more than a third of their stories fall into the opinion genre.

Multimedia

One in 10 (n.390, 10.1 percent) of all stories had multimedia elements, with the most common element being a photo gallery. But there are four major distinctions about multimedia stories this fall:

1. Santa Monica had 99 stories (68.3 percent) with photo galleries.

2. Canyons had videos with all but one of its 62 stories.

3. Only two colleges —San Diego City and Cerritos— include transcripts with audio and video stories.

4. Fifteen publications, or one third, had no multimedia stories, though some could have had they placed stories with three or more photos into a photo gallery widget.

Galleries

Photo galleries offer publications one of the easiest ways to add multimedia to their stories and websites and no one does it better and more consistently than Santa Monica. About half (n.25) of publications in the state used photo galleries at least once. Only two —Santa Monica and Santa Barbara (n.12)— used them 10 or more times, but some uses are better than others. By far, the most common and best way to include a gallery is to pair it with a story. The least effective way is to present a gallery alone, with no paragraph or story helping the reader understand the story; presentation is important. About four out of five stories with galleries (n.162, 82.7 percent) were presented with stories. Another eight included at least a paragraph introducing the story.

Perhaps more interesting, though, was the number of times when stories included three or more photos and couldhave been presented with galleries. This happened 345 times by 36 publications. Galleries might not be the best solution in all those cases —interspersing photos throughout the story might be a better presentation— but publications who run three or more photos outside of galleries and might consider adding the new feature the most include San Diego Mesa (n.60), El Camino (n.57), Santa Barbara (n.34), Fullerton (n.33), and Pierce (n.19). Ten other publications had 10 or more instances.

Videos

Just 19 publications included video with their posts, though none are more dedicated to video as a storytelling device as Canyons (n.62), which apparently starts with video and then adds text with its presentations 98.4 percent of the time. San Diego City (n.36) also sees value in video, but takes them even a step further by adding transcripts. Indeed, it regularly includes text stories with video, audio, AND transcripts bundled together.

Publications paired video with text stories 88 times, or seven in 10 times (72.7 percent).

Movie reviews and features that include live links to trailers were included in these counts.

Audio

Fifteen publications included audio with posts, with San Diego City (n.11), Pasadena (n.10), Santa Rosa (n.9), and Santa Monica (n.8). using it most frequently. Audio can include “stand-alone” stories, though few actually stand best by themselves and require at least some text as an introduction for the reader. But audio can also include snippets from recorded interviews.

Interactive/Other

Just San Diego City (n.2), Santa Barbara (n.1), El Camino (n.1), and San Joaquin Delta (n.1) ventured into the world of interactive multimedia, which perhaps requires a deeper understanding of data related to news stories and exploration of new online tools.

· San Diego City’s two ventures were interactive timelines, one dealing with campus housing and the other with community college bachelor degrees.

· Santa Barbara created an electronic ‘zine that presents animation similar to issuu or yumpu.

· El Camino created an interactive map outlining the scope of enrollment frauds that affected many community colleges across the state.

· San Joaquin Delta included a scrolling PDF from a state website of a lawsuit filed for the district to remove one of its trustees.

HOT TOPICS

So, what did students write about in Fall 2023? While I did not specifically measure them, the most common non-sports, campus-based stories were about an array of campus workshops on a wide range of topics, followed by other campus events, as opposed to issues, though the issue stories tended to be the most interesting.

The word cloud above, which shows topics for all non-sports stories, regardless of localization or genre, illustrates that economy stories were prevalent, followed by holiday-themed stories.

Economy (n.144) – Economy stories dealt with anything from campus food pantries for poor students to thrift shopping to textbook costs to bus pass discounts for students to campus finances. Closely related, but not always included were campus efforts for student housing. Noteworthy examples include:

· DeAnza - Dining services reports almost $1 million deficit since resuming full-time operations

· Diablo Valley - Students Hit By Wave of Problems Due to California’s Housing Crisis

Holiday (n.256) – This was the first semester I tracked “holiday” stories, which included campus events and other features related to formal holidays, such as Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, to so-called “minor” holidays like Veteran’s Day, to pseudo holidays like Indigenous People’s Day or Mexican Heritage Month. One of my favorites was:

· Bakersfield - Interview with a witch

Boards of trustees (n. 63)– Board of Trustees stories, of course, are a part of campus governance coverage. It is surprising to see only half the publications covering their boards, which can also be a source of ideas for other campus stories. Unlike with many industry publications, lack of available resources should not be a problem for student publications, only lack of interest. Most stories were meeting stories or features about board members, but there were some important topics brought before boards, such as whether to fly Pride flags on campus to adding student housing to actually trying to get rid of individual trustees. Laney, in particular, holds its trustees’ feet to the fire. Noteworthy trustees stories included:

· San Joaquin Delta – Delta College seeks to remove Area 5 trustee, Attorney General grants permission

· Laney - The Citizen Investigates: PCCD Vendor High Performance Learning Environments

Crime (n.125) – Crime stories involved pretty Much anything that required law enforcement action, from finding dead bodies on campus to off-campus court actions. Stories ran from hard-hitting news stories to routine police blotter stories that only Pasadena and El Camino run regularly. Some noteworthy stories included:

· Diablo Valley - Dark Secrets Unveiled: In Disturbing Court Testimony, Women Allege DVC Professor Assaulted Them In “Sex Dungeon” and On Campus

· El Camino - Trial in murder of El Camino student Juan Hernandez continued until 2024

· Mt. San Antonio - Altercation between three people leads to stabbing at Mt. SAC

· Fresno - Fresno City College Instructor Put On Administrative Leave Following Resurfaced Sexual Violence Allegations

Music (n. 217) – Music stories ranged from album reviews and features to news stories about upcoming band and choir performances on campus. Taylor Swift, Drake, and Bad Bunny were artists most covered. Non-campus stories (n.91) outnumbered campus stories (n.81), but not by that much. Community coverage (n.45) was strong, too. Campus stories tend to be event-oriented stories. Many music reviews really are features with any opinion buried deep.

Clubs (n. 82) – Like with holiday stories this semester marked my first attempt to track club-focused stories. Naturally, all were campus-focused stories, which included both news and features. Most colleges regularly run club awareness days, but only about two-thirds of publications had any club stories.

· Santa Monica - Whiplash Decision for Installment of Students Supporting Israel Club sends Shockwaves through Campus

· Cypress - Clubs on Campus: Vital for Student’s Growth From Elementary School to College

LGBTQ+ (n.66) – A statewide emphasis on and increased funding for LGBTQ+ awareness has led to a spate of stories about Pride Centers on campus, but student publications have shown their own leadership along with routine event and feature stories. Trustees in some parts of the state faced backlash from conservative community groups, especially when Pride flags are displayed on campus. Some awareness stories included:

· Long Beach – Adding pronouns to professors’ rosters will reflect LBCC’s respect for transgender students

· Riverside – Chino Valley USD endangers queer students

· Cosumnes River - Rocklin school board passes parental notification policy on gender identity

Mental Health/Stress/Suicide (n.92) – There is a lot of stress and mental health in higher education these days and publications are writing about ways to deal with it. Included in this list were any stories that also dealt with suicide and suicide prevention.

· Pasadena - Mental health on campus: Professors need help too

· Grossmont - Master The Chaos

Movies (n.171) – It would be easy to predict that movies like Barbie and Oppenheimer would be reviewed by students. Other major theatrical reviews and features covered included Five Nights at Freddy; Nightmare Before Christmas (30^th anniversary); Taylor Swift: Eras Tour; Killers of the Flower Moon; Saw X; and, most often, Nun 2. Movie stories included campus showings and many film program events.

Infrastructure (n.106) – Stories from malfunctioning infrastructure to campus building plans and maintenance of the campus’ facilities were classified as infrastructure stories. Some interesting ones included:

· East LA - Malfunctioning elevators disrupt students

· El Camino - Union-backed Modular Village bid to cost El Camino double the original offer

· Pasadena - Some grass at PCC may soon be outlawed

Transportation (n.75)– Transportation stories mostly included campus parking issues and mass transit discount plans for students. Off campus stories included community car shows and campus-adjacent auto accidents.

· Pasadena - PCC students lead the way in public transit adoption

· Long Beach - Witnesses recall fatal car crash on Pacific Coast Highway

Protests (n.38) – There were a number of protests and strikes to follow this semester, from the Middle East conflict to the writers and screen actors strikes in Hollywood to campus union actions, and campus publications, especially in Metro areas, were fond of covering them. (At one point it looked like Santa Monica, for instance, was covering a strike/protest each week: why not with its phalanx of photographers creating photo galleries in need of stories?) Campus-related protests included:

· Santa Monica - Protests Scheduled To Take Place At Premiere of Controversial SMC Play

· Riverside - Riverside City College women’s basketball team and head coach protest on campus, citing lack of uniforms and transportation

Israel/Hamas/Gaza (n.60) – Ukraine (n.8) practically dropped off the radar this semester with outbreak of hostilities in Gaza. Most protests and editorials were critical of Israel’s response to the Oct. 6 attack by Hamas. Both community and campus protests were included in this group. Some standouts included.

· Santa Monica - Colleges Have Become a Battleground for Discourse on the Gaza War

· Pasadena - Do campus attempts to stifle protest violate the 1st Amendment?

While not as prevalent, other hot issues in society were reported on as well: topics, such as new laws, the Ukraine War, student loans, DACA and immigration, community college bachelor degrees, student senates, unions, enrollments/enrollment frauds, and housing issues/homelessness.

And while stories in Spanish are still few, there was an uptick of them this fall. Five publications published 12 stories in Spanish, with Long Beach leading with eight of those stories. It used to require someone on the staff with the ability to translate stories, but with tools like translate.google.com, which is used by the Viking, all publications have the ability to translate stories to Spanish if they feel it would be valuable to readers.

SOURCES

When I was advising student publications a major emphasis in my syllabus and critiques was use of sources. The ability to synthesize information from other sources is an important skill for journalists, but a paramount skill is the ability to actually talk to sources and make sense of what they say. To get full credit for any story in my system students needed a minimum of two primary sources in the story -- preferably named/identified and relevant sources and preferably not tacked on to the end of the story like an afterthought.

This semester I chose to also look at the use of sources in stories from around the state. I looked at source use from campus news stories and campus sports stories, two areas where students were more likely to have direct contact with sources.

Method

For the study I isolated the campus news stories from all others and later isolated campus sports stories. With each group I chose a somewhat representative sample to review. There were 1,577 news stories and 643 sports stories. My target sample was 200 news stories (about 13 percent of the population) and 100 sports stories (about 16 percent of the population).

After determining what percentage of stories came from each publication I created a sample group for each of the two studies. I used a random number generator to select actual stories for the samples.

With news stories there was one of the 51 publications that would have been excluded, so I adjusted the sample to 201 and included all publications. With sports, the sample was more complex to match; there were only 47 publications with at least one sports story, but still, with a smaller sample, as many as seven publications would have been excluded, so, again, I expanded the sample to 107 so that each publication was represented. (See Appendix A and Appendix B to see which stories were selected for the news and sports studies.) In both cases this skewed the sample a bit so that it did not precisely represent the populations.

With both groups I selected stories from across the semester so that the percentage from each month closely matched the percentage from the population. With sports I considered also matching percentage by sport, but it became too complex for the variety of sports covered in such a small sample. I was able, however, to include stories that fairly represented the percentage from the population of men's and women's sports when gender was identifiable and relevant. It should be noted that some stories, such as roundups, included both genders, but balance was maintained.

News

The selection method resulted in a high of 18 news stories from one publication (El Camino) to one story each for 11 publications.

Once the sample was drawn, I looked at each story to count the number and kinds of sources used in each story. I noted whether the source was a college employee, a student, document/web source, other, or none. Each source was counted only once per story. PDF publication of a page or entire print issue counted as one document source.

Thirteen publications (6.5 percent) had zero sources and another 52 had just one. Los Medanos had one story with 14 sources and DeAnza had one with 11 sources. The overall average was 2.7 sources per story.

No attempt was made to distinguish whether sources were actually interviewed or were merely quoted as part of a presentation.

The employee group was the largest cohort of sources. Employees included anyone working for the college and other officials, such as elected board of trustee members. Employees accounted for 42.2 percent of all sources and were present in nearly two-thirds (64.7 percent) of stories.

Unsurprisingly, the student group was the second largest cohort. Students represented 26.3 percent of all sources and were present in just over one-third (36.3 percent) of stories.

The next largest cohort was the "other" group. This included campus guests, including guest lecturers. If sources were inadequately identified for placement in another cohort they ended up here. About one in six stories (17.3 percent) had "other" sources. "Other" sources accounted for 30.8 percent of all sources.

And just more than a quarter of all stories (26.9 percent) had a document source. Document sources were other printed sources, such as quoting from The New York Times, emails, or campus documents. About one in 11 (17.3 percent) of all sources were document sources.

Sports

Los Medanos ended up with nine sports selections and East LA and El Camino had seven. Twenty-one publications had just one selection.

Sports sources cohorts included coaches/employees, athletes, documents, other, and none. Not all stories were game stories; some were stories about campus sports in general, such as the selection of a new athletic director or a feature about a mascot.

A fifth of the stories (n.24, 21.8 percent) had no sources; many of these included roundups. Nineteen stories (17.3 percent) had just one source. Overall, there were just 1.7 sources per story; this was largely because of the "zero source" stories. The most sources in a story was four, which occurred five times.

Just over half of all stories (n.56, 50.9 percent) had athletes as sources and more than two-thirds (n.76, 69.1 percent) had coaches. Twenty-four stories had coaches as the sole sources and six had athletes as the sole sources.

The coach cohort included all coaches for the college's team, including assistant coaches, and other employees, such as stadium announcers, college presidents, and board members. Coaches accounted for 45.1 percent of all sources.

Athletes included only those for the home team; athletes or coaches from opposing teams were counted as "other." Athletes accounted for 48.9 percent of all sources.

Interestingly, the most common combination of sources, present in one of five stories, was one coach and two athletes. This percentage climbed when one coach and three athletes were included.

Document and "other" sources were less common in campus sports stories, accounting for just 1.6 percent and 4.4 percent, respectively.

Observations

It was heartening to see the 2.7 sources per news story and 1.7 sources per sports story. And while it was not surprising to see college employees as the leading news sources, it should be pointed out that employees represent a small percentage of the overall population of the campus. Publications would do well to reflect on the types of sources they choose if they wish to represent their campus readers.

The balance between coaches and athletes as sources in sports stories was closer to even, even though the ratio of coaches to athletes suggests that more athletes might be considered for truer balance. More alarming was the percentage of "zero source" sports stories. And not all publications had at least one campus sports story when all campuses with a news publication have at least one athletic team, and presumably some intramural, club or esports teams on campus.

Concerned publications might conduct their own content surveys to get a picture of who they routinely include as sources. For instance, no attempt was made here to identify which college employees were included as news sources, but college presidents probably are overrepresented in news stories. Local surveys might also look at gender and ethnicity of their sources, as well. The same is true in sports representation. Still, another look might be to plot on a campus map where stories come from to see if all sections of campus are represented.

PUBLICATION-BY-PUBLICATION REPORTS

and APPENDICES

The author is under no illusion that everyone will want to read reports for all 54 publications that are monitored each semester, but some may find that reading other publication reports helpful as not all operate under the same conditions. For instance, some publish in the morning, others in the afternoon, and still others in the evening. Some publish multiple times each week while others publish online less than weekly. Some focus exclusively on campus-focused stories while others venture out to their local communities or well beyond; some barely cover campus stories.

Publications might want to look at peer publications, or ones that they would like to be peers.

Reports show current semester numbers and percentages, previous semester data, rankings compared to others in the state, and posting patterns.

Here are links to the individual publication-by-publication reports for Fall 2023 (click to download PDF):

American River - Bakersfield - Butte - Cabrillo - Canyons - Cerritos - Chabot - Chaffey - Citrus - Contra Costa - Cosumnes River - Cuesta - Cypress - DeAnza - Desert - Diablo Valley - East LA - El Camino - Foothill - Fresno - Fullerton - Glendale - Grossmont - LA City - LA Valley - Laney - Las Positas - Long Beach - Los Medanos - Moorpark - Moreno Valley - Mt. San Antonio - Mt. San Jacinto - Orange Coast - Palomar - Pasadena - Pierce - Rio Hondo - Riverside - Sacramento - Saddleback - San Diego City - San Diego Mesa - San Francisco - San Joaquin Delta - San Jose - Santa Ana - Santa Barbara - Santa Monica - Santa Rosa - Sequoias - Sierra - Skyline - Southwestern